You may remember a couple of weeks back we were overwhelmed by the depths of enthusiasm in a press release for Codemasters’ Damnation. It seems our mocking was taken in the best of humour, and Codies got in touch with us offering a chance to speak to the man responsible, PR Man Sam Cordier.

“Only if you give us some exclusive assets and a compo prize!” we replied, with our signature arrogance*. Well, they’ve finally broken and given us some Damnation art work you won’t find anywhere else. Click on the pics for full size versions.

Right, so if you want yourself a copy of Codies’ Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, you can win it by emailing us the best 15-word max sentence celebrating Rock, Paper, Shotgun with as many superlatives as possible. (Include your address and real-life name, all rules we make up apply whenever we think of them.)

And read on for one of the most hard-hitting, cut-to-the-bone interviews you’re ever likely to read.

Sam Cordier: Probably every time I pick up a new gaming console. I’ll never forget when I bought a copy of Street Fighter 2 for the Super NES and I couldn’t afford to get the console until a few weeks after that. I had the game sitting on my desk and I’d look at it everyday, begging my parents to relent and help buy me the console. When I finally got it, I was insanely excited – and probably spent the next few days playing it without any sleep. I still lost to my brother who was always better than me…

RPS: Which is your favourite Michael Bay film, and why?

Sam: Transformers… cause it brought those fabulous toys/cartoons that we used to play with as kids to life. Plus it had great special effects! How cool do they look in the fight scenes?!?

RPS: Er, worse than anything else we could ever have imagined, or drawn with a crayon. If you had to pick between flying, and firing fireballs from the palms of your hands, which would you chose?

Sam: Flying. Every day.

RPS: Who would win in a fight between Jane Austen and Florence Nightingale, and why?

Sam: Florence Nightingale. She’ll probably use her medical knowledge to pinpoint exactly where she can do the most damage. Although, it’s not a fight I’d pay to see…

RPS: So go on then, tell us why Damnation is going to be more enthralling than the other 30,000 action games we’ll be seeing in the next year. You’re not allowed to use the word, “huge”.

Sam: Can I say vast then? Damnation takes all the best bits from games like Prince of Persia, Gears of War and takes place in VAST streaming environments where the sense of scale is literally vertigo inducing. It’s also got loads of weapons and incredible vehicles, with which players will be able to pull off awesome stunts. There’s simply nothing else out there like it and on top of it all, it’s graphically superb and the story will blow you away.

RPS: Finally, could you write us a press-release-style comment for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, in what is surely now your infamous style?

Sam: Rocking the internet with its eclectic collection of news, reviews and all things gaming, Rock Paper, Shotgun is proud to announce a whole new set of concept art from the HUGE forthcoming super-game, Damnation!! ; )

RPS: Why… you… we oughta…

*This is all a horrible lie – Codies offered it to us out of the kindess of their hearts

Is the team made up of the same guys who made the original UT2004 mod back in the day? I remember really enjoying that, and I’m happy that it’s being made into a proper game. Still, I’m a bit sad that the main bloke character no longer has a pair of insane goggles masking his face is is just your typical lantern-jawed hero. I like goggles. On the other hand, everything else just checks all sorts of boxes for me. I especially like the bowler hat wearing robots.

“Can I say vast then? Damnation takes all the best bits from games like Prince of Persia, Gears of War and takes place in VAST streaming environments where the sense of scale is literally vertigo inducing. It’s also got loads of weapons and incredible vehicles, with which players will be able to pull off awesome stunts. There’s simply nothing else out there like it and on top of it all, it’s graphically superb and the story will blow you away.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sure a lot of PR agents, and overly charismatic developers, love to use these descriptions for any game being made. In fact, you can apply this paragraph on any title being made out there.

I loved how you were trying to get some kind of unique identity from this suit – bonus points for no usage of ‘huge’.

Am I the only one gutted to learn that this is from the makers of Turning Point, which was by all accounts pretty wretched? I was intrigued by all the motorcycles-on-walls, bowler-hatted-robottery of it all, and now am significantly less so :(

I wasn’t too interested in this at first, but I just realised that this used to be a UT2004 mod that had a demo released (I recall finding the name familar when news about this game was first posted); that has increased my anticipation a lot, as the mod had a lot of interesting ideas and great scale to its level design (maybe it’s still available somewhere?). It might actually somewhat live up to its “taking shooters vertical” hyperbole.

With female characters like that no wonder so many people don’t take gaming seriously. Yes, we all love breasts, can we now move on? Also, I don’t see how guns and vehicles are the evolution of shooters.

Hey…does anyone know how to get their hands on some drawings of the weapons in Damnation ? I want to make some props modeled after them but can’t find clear pics or drawings of the weps. I think the Idea of steam powered arms is cool…best part of the game. Having some of that serum wouldn’t be bad either. heh heh